Every year, I check for changes on IRS tax forms, and I get to see all the little improvements most will never notice: better kerning, boldface where appropriate, removing excess italics. It's subtle, but they're living documents under constant revision.

Taxation without representation, you might call it.

Electronics buying tip: if you're in the market for a new Widget RSX, search eBay for "Widget RSX For Parts" to see all the ways it can break.

I wrote you a short history of math in the last century and its implications for how we can write better data analysis code. If you're not a data hacker, there's still interesting stuff there for you, like a deep dive into whether Bertrand Russell caused my birth. codeberg.org/b_k/math_out...

Found tied to the barricade.

Someone please show the man a map in any other projection

I appreciate that coder culture, for all its many failings, has a generally mature attitude toward bugs. You maybe file a bug report, and move on, instead of screencapping and posting to the socials, "look at this idiot who made a fencepost error".

Every year, I do a list of 10 games I loved that year -- this is 2025! My guess is you'll know some of them, and also that you won't know some of them. Please let me tell you about these fine video games!! (Links are mostly to Steam, but some are on console too.) /thread

can't believe economics would just put together a theory that only explains ~33% of total economic growth and just calls the other 66% "productivity" and pretend they understand it. that wouldn't happen in physics - instead of "productivity" they'd have "dark technology"

What does a modern particle experiment look like? Here are some pictures of one under construction: Mu2e at Fermilab. This year, I became a theory member of this experiment. I would like to thank Mu2e co-spokesperson, Robert Bernstein, for showing us the experiment and providing great explanations.🧪

To help you with the acronym soup, CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Among other things, this is the agency tasked with helping states run secure elections.

bird migration is powered by extra + extra powerful mitochondria - that are activated ONLY during migration season. @lizlandau.bsky.social www.quantamagazine.org/turbocharged...

The holidays are such a brutal war between people who have time to celebrate them and people who do not.

So we recommend that states: —Provide grants to localities to improve infrastructure around transit —Right-size the relationship between affordability requirements with incentives (e.g., tax relief) for market conditions —Support affordable housing through subsidies Read our full report ⏬

Party hosting tip: open up the graphic equalizer in your music app and turn down the bands from about 300 to 4k. That's the human voice range, and your guests will be able to hear each other with less strain.

Did you know plants can heat themselves up? Even cooler, these beetles in the Amazon detect the changes infrared intensity to go pollinate those plants, representing one of the oldest forms of pollination. My latest for National Geographic: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

And! Your public library most likely offers access to the major newspapers. You can just login & check out the day's stories (or past ones) for free.

an important read for at least 2 reasons: 1. shows how big tech operates on intuitions and vibes and not rigorous research 2. this is a masterpiece in how to breakdown complex scientific concepts in simple language and elegant pros that captivate the lay reader taranis.ie/datacenters-...

DDOT continues to publish before/after analyses of safety projects. The numbers for the 9th street NW bike lanes suggest that we should be doing these projects everywhere we can. Crashes plummeted, pedestrian and bike traffic skyrocketed, and vehicle travel times dropped.

This was the most joyful Tiny Desk ever I've ever witnessed, with the Chilean TV show 31 Minutos and all their puppets. If pressed for time, skip to 18:00, the show's theme song about how the narrator's life got better after they got rid of their TV. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEqT...

"Strong floor, no ceilings" reminds me of back when I moved into this house and the rear addition collapsed.

I don't know how to reconcile that slop like this gets through, while a paper which I submitted to an Elsevier journal 17 months ago is still awaiting peer review.

Lawyers, is there any reason why I as an author shouldn't take the cash in the Anthropic settlement?

Good to know it's not just me. An Amtrak conductor once wouldn't let me board because I had a folding bike. I was prepared, and pulled out a printout of Amtrak's official policy. "That's just a piece of paper," he replied.

Blog entry: The past-performance trap. When government agencies need to have custom software built, as a matter of course they require that the bidding vendors have built that exact thing before. I understand why this seems like a good idea, but it’s a mistake.

I left CNN in 2014 but my interview with James Watson was still referenced in his obit (along with a shout-out to Rosalind Franklin) www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/u...

Academic article pro tip: passing peer review means two reviewers thought the work was OK and the editor didn't say no. A stronger signal is the thanks on the front page: how many people did the authors circulate the draft to, who were in a position to comment, call out, and improve the work?

For @techpolicypress.bsky.social I laid out a tech agenda for Mayor-elect zohrankmamdani.bsky.social that resists surveillance and extraction while advancing his goals for affordability, dignity, and justice.

Haven't mentioned it in a while, but I wrote a Greasemonkey script for Firefox which will remove opinion pieces from the front page, leaving a calm, blank space. github.com/b-k/tweets-a...

My 14yr old is learning blender. He already has a space capsule, rocket, and launch sequence. But this detail made my morning.

December 2023

If you are a federal scientist in the US and have a been served a RIF notice during the shutdown, experts say this is illegal. you can contact Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) confidentially via the Science Committee Democrats’ Whistleblower form democrats-science.house.gov/contact/whis... 🧪.

Alvaro Bedoya, former FTC commissioner, has a lot to say, and he's worth listening to. "Maybe we punch up instead of punching the neighbor." newrepublic.com/article/2011...

It's Bandcamp Friday, so here are some recommendations. ★ Oddissee, whom I will continue to refer to as "DC's own" even though he moved to Brooklyn. oddiseemmg.bandcamp.com/album/en-route

🧪🍎📃 It only took me 500 years to finish this 📊, but here it is 🎉 Grocery shops in many wealthy countries are oversupplied with animal-based foods. They stock far more meat and dairy than we need for human and planetary health. 🔗 www.lumipie.com/data-vis/pla...

Got my first electric bill since installing the solar panels: negative seventy bucks. I've never felt so good receiving a utility bill

I've got one left.

Japanese girls playing basketball at Manzanar Incarceration Camp, Owens Valley, CA. Photo 1 by Francis Stewart. Photo 2 Merritt Photo Collection.

In case you missed it: scientists found this sign of possible past life on Mars! My latest for Nat Geo: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

What happens when a Nat'l Geographic animals editor goes for a nature walk:

Good morning! It’s Tuesday August 19th 2025! Already? Crikey! (Out this very month in 1960, just 65 yrs ago, Tales To Astonish #13, with its cover featuring the mighty Groot by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Stan Goldberg & Artie Simek.) You be careful out there among them English, John Book.

This is the logo for the now-decommissioned DataFerrett tool from the U.S. Census Bureau. Every bureaucracy should have a mascot.

i'm probably not gonna buy a vintage tape machine on reverb

Washington DC has 702,000 people, is 45% Black and has 0 senators Wyoming has 590,000 people, is 86% white and has 2 senators DC needs a state with proper representation, not a military takeover

Intrigued by the question, am reskeeting this in the hopes that one of you have insights.

I mentioned stardrift.live in the stream and just wanted to share it so you could see! it's a work in progress. it just creates randomized simulations right now that you can kinda watch unfold.

Thinking I should write my credit union and ask them to switch away from using Mastercard for cc services. Every Bandcamp Friday, Mastercard shuts me down, with a flurry of "suspicious activity" alerts. I do this every month! You get ~3% to do one job! Why is buying from musicians suspicious?

My surprising fact for today. Needed the centroid to vertex distance for this cuboctahedron. Thought I'd got the sum wrong; it is the same as the edge length! Apparently the only polyhedron where this is true!🧪